The Lure Of The Mississippi Part 11

"Now," he ordered, as he turned around and started back toward the net, "beat the water with that pole and make as much noise as you can."

Very soon the two men could see streaks in the smooth water. "Oh, I see," exclaimed Bill, as he splashed the water to right and left, "we're trying to drive them into the net. There, we've got one! See the float go down. There's another one. Watch the big one! He isn't going in. Look at him. See him run along the net. Look at him! He's run around the net and is going down the river like a streak!"

"He is a big old buffalo-sucker," the trapper laughed. "He is too wise to be caught in a gill-net."

"Say, Mr. Barker," the boy asked, "can fish think?"

"I reckon some of the old ones can," Barker answered. "Well never catch that big fellow. I think he weighs fifteen pounds, I reckon his nose has touched a net before."

The net was literally filled with fish of many kinds, suckers, pickerel, pike, ba.s.s, big sunfish, and fierce-looking gars.

"We don't want those alligators," the boy remarked, when the trapper threw several of the gars into the boat. "They have a long snout and are covered with h.o.r.n.y plates just like alligators," the boy continued.

"They surely would be alligators if they had legs. I couldn't eat them."

"That's all right," Barker laughed. "You needn't. Most white men throw them away, but I learned from the Indians how to fix them. You pour boiling water on their plates and they come off in big pieces. Their meat has a fine flavor and they don't have any sharp little bones like pickerel and most of the suckers. I think you'll eat them after they are smoked or fried."

CHAPTER X-CATCHING A MONSTER

Bill helped Tatanka and Barker to smoke the fish they had caught and then was ready for another trip.

"Can't we go again, before it gets too cold?" he asked. "Let us go again, Mr. Barker, this meat won't last long. I just wish Tim could go, too!"

The old trapper himself had also caught the fever. "I reckon, boy," he admitted, "we ought to make another haul or two, but the next time we'll take a seine. Did you ever fish with a seine! It is more fun than with a gill-net, but we must go soon, before the water gets too cold, for in seining, the fisherman gets as wet as the fish."

On the next warm day, Barker remarked at breakfast: "Bill, this looks like a good day. I guess we'll be off right away."

The two fishermen rode down stream to a place where a deep bayou or slough joined the main river. They started to seine half a mile up the bayou. One end of the seine was tied to a stout pole driven into the bottom of the bayou. The other end, they swung around in a half-circle, Bill rowing the boat and the trapper managing the seine from the stern of the boat. They caught all kinds of fish in the same manner that boys and fishermen catch minnows. Their troubles began when they started to make a haul in a strong current in deep water near the mouth of the bayou. The net caught on a submerged stump and could not be pulled off against the current.

"I reckon we're stuck," said Barker, as he found it impossible to move the seine either one way or the other.

"Let me dive in and fix it," begged the boy, as he began to strip.

Barker thought the water was too cold, but Bill said he wouldn't mind it, and it wouldn't take long to try it.

Bill splashed some water over himself and then swam quickly to the spot where the net was caught. He dived, opened his eyes and could see clearly every mesh of the net as it was held fast by the current over a sharp stump. He lifted it off quickly and threw it over the stump down stream and struck out for sh.o.r.e. His skin was blue and his teeth chattered as he hurriedly got into his clothes. Then he ran back and forth on the sand a few minutes to get warm.

"Now, Mr. Barker," he said, "let's make the haul and see what we get out of this deep hole. There ought to be some big ones in it."

Both men slowly pulled the seine through the deep hole, where by means of small leads attached to the lower edge of the seine, the big drag-net swept the bottom, driving all deep-water fish before it.

As the bag-like middle part of the seine slowly crept into shallower water on a rising sandbank, there was a great stir in the enclosed pool.

Big fish of several kinds came to the surface. Some showing a silvery flash for just a moment, dived again to the bottom in their attempt to escape, others, bolder or made more desperate, shot with a loud splash over the seine back into free water.

Bill pulled as he had never pulled on anything before.

"Pull, Mr. Barker, pull!" he shouted. "We've got a wagon-load of big ones, but they're breaking away."

The old trapper pulled as hard as Bill, but he didn't hear what Bill called to him, for the fish in their last desperate effort to escape made a deafening confusion and noise with splas.h.i.+ng, jumping and flapping about. The big bag was alive with a wildly struggling ma.s.s of fish of all sizes; and so heavy was the catch that the two fishermen could not move the net another inch.

"Drop the rope," commanded the old man, "and throw them out on the sand."

As Bill sprang into the shallow water, a big flopping fish, the like of which he had never seen before, got between his legs and laid him sprawling flat on his stomach amongst the madly struggling fish. In a moment Bill was on his feet again.

"Help me, Mr. Barker, help me," he called. "I can't hold him; he'll get away!"

"Grab him in the gills!" the trapper shouted, as much excited as his boy friend.

The black giant was just splas.h.i.+ng into open water when Bill threw himself forward and caught him firmly in the gills.

"Catch him, Mr. Barker, catch him!" Bill spluttered as he blew the water out of his nose and mouth. "I can't lift him."

By their united effort, they dragged the monster on sh.o.r.e.

"We've caught a whale, a real whale," Bill shouted, and danced around like a wild Indian. "What is it, Mr. Barker! Is it a whale?"

"It is a paddle-fish, but sure a big one, I reckon," the trapper told him as he dragged the ungainly monster into the gra.s.s. "He must weigh a hundred pounds, and he measures six feet, if he measures an inch."

Sorting the fish and loading them into the boat took some time, and when the work was done, the two fishermen could not help laughing at each other. Their clothes were dripping wet and covered with mud and fish-scales all over, but they had a boat-load of fish.

"That's all a part of fis.h.i.+ng," Barker remarked, with his quiet smile.

"It is a saying among us trappers that dry fishermen and wet hunters have had poor luck. I guess our luck was worth getting soaked for."

Before they started for camp all small fish or fish not wanted were put back in the water. Bill had already learned the maxim of the old trapper: "Never waste any of G.o.d's wild bread and meat. What you do not need to-day, you may want badly to-morrow."

"I have seen the days," the old man had often told the boys, "when I was mighty glad to dip a mess of minnows out of a spring-hole in winter, and I have many times thanked the Good Lord that porcupines can't run as fast as deer.

"One winter while I was trapping in upper Michigan I lost my gun while crossing a treacherous stream, and if I could not have killed porcupines, fool-hens, and snowshoe rabbits with a club, I should have had to pull out of the country and leave my traps and furs."

When they arrived at camp, Tim was wild at the sight of the giant paddle-fish, and the boys found that the odd paddle-shaped snout of the fish was almost half the length of the fish.

"What does he do with his big paddle?" Tim wanted to know. But neither the Indian nor the trapper could answer the question.

"Have they a paddle when they are just hatched?" Bill asked, but neither Tatanka nor Barker had ever seen a paddle-fish less than a foot long.

The life of the paddle-fish or spoonbill is a mystery to this day, and little more is known of it now than was known to Indians and whites when Bill and Tim camped on Lake Pepin.

The armor-plated gars and paddle-fish are found only in the Mississippi and its tributaries, while ba.s.s and pickerel and eel are found in most waters flowing into the North Atlantic, both in America and Europe.

Both gar and spoonbill are still caught in Lake Pepin. A European fish, the German carp, has become naturalized in the Mississippi basin and many carloads of it are s.h.i.+pped to Eastern markets every year. However, the game fish of the old days are still all there and will never become scarce, if good fish and game laws are wisely administered.

In the days of Barker and Tatanka, fis.h.i.+ng with any kind of net or tackle was lawful, but to-day both commercial fishermen and anglers have to observe the laws, or our lakes and streams will become fished out; for the resources and gifts of nature are not inexhaustible, and the number of men and boys who go fis.h.i.+ng increases each year.

For fis.h.i.+ng, camping, and canoeing, for grand scenery, for house-boating, motor-boating, for trees, flowers, and birds and for all kinds of water creatures such as clams, crayfish and muskrats, the Mississippi, the "Everywhere River" of the Chippewa Indians, has no equal on the northern hemisphere and is surpa.s.sed only by the Amazon of South America.

In the Itasca Forest of Minnesota, the Mississippi begins as a tiny stream, which sometimes loses itself in a tamarack swamp, and which the beaver people, the little animal engineers, can easily dam with mud and brush. When it leaves Itasca, it is large enough to carry a canoe. But the rippling little creek grows rapidly by receiving the water from many lakes and streams and long before it reaches Minneapolis, where it furnishes power to grind the wheat grown over half a continent, it is a stately navigable river, whose enormous volumes of flood-water only the most skillful engineer can control.